


Drunken Bee

by Metamorphmigus



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Drunken Aliens, M/M, angsty fluff, late night visits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29977365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metamorphmigus/pseuds/Metamorphmigus
Summary: Did you know that Bee's can get drunk? Yup! If they drink fermented nectar they can get drunk and make alcoholic honey, which the hive certainly doesn't want. So the hive employs workers at the entrance's to stop any drunks from entering. They shoo them away to sleep it off somewhere, even going so far as to tear off legs as punishment! Talk about strict! What does that have to do with the story you ask? Well, Zim can't get in his house. You can guess why. And you can guess where he goes.
Relationships: Dib/Zim (Invader Zim)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58





	Drunken Bee

Tap Tap 

Tap Tap Tap

Tap Tap

Dib rolled over in his bed, groaning in his fitful slumber. He was still for a moment until his conscious brain realized that the sound had been real and coming from his room. Sitting up carefully, he gave the room a cursory scan as he tried to push his hair away from his face. It was in a partial glow composed of various computer components and the ghosty glow night light on his bedpost. The rest was in deep shadow. All of the electronics gave off the steady thrum of fans, or the occasional beep. Nothing like what he had heard.

Everything looked in place as far as he could tell. His head ached in protest at being pulled from sleep when it felt like he’d only just drifted off. Eyes drifting to his clock, the angry red numbers glared back a furious 3:45am.

Dib sighed and lay his head back onto his pillow. His eyes slammed shut like angry shutters in a storm, heavy and prepared to remain so for the duration. Surely, it was a dream.

Tap Tap

Sitting up sharply, Dib looked around again, but his blurred vision couldn’t pick out anything. He quickly grabbed his glasses and slid them on with practiced ease as he untangled himself from the cocoon of blankets. 

Leaving the safety of the warm ball had been hard only because it had taken so long to get there in the first place. Now that he was awake, he welcomed the cool air that tickled along his skin and chased away the lingering vestiges of sleep. It sharpened his senses, which paired well with the ping of adrenaline that lit up along his spine. For now, sleep was a distant memory.

“Hello?” Dib called into the shadows of his room. Moving slowly, he grabbed the bat he kept by the nightstand for emergencies. Hearing a slight muffled sound, like a cough, turned his head sharply at attention. Monsters don't cough, he thought. As the fear of the imaginary quickly fled, he stepped confidently across his room. 

He first went to his door, pulled it open quickly with one hand. But the hall was dark. His sisters’ door was shut, the light out. Any sound he heard definitely wasn’t coming from there. And if there was, he definitely wasn’t going in to check it out unless Gaz gave the ok. He learned that lesson the hard way.

Tap Tap

Dib whipped around, the bat raised in preparation to strike. It was coming from the window. No trees grew in their side yard so Dib never had to worry about that particular nightmare scratching at his window. Which meant it could only be one thing.

“Zim?” Dib said in quiet surprise when he stepped close enough to peer through the glass pane. Zim dangled by two pak legs from the roof while two others supported his weight against the wall. 

He had his human disguise on, but that did little to make him look normal in this particular instance. His clothes were dirty, a bruise was forming around one eye, his hair was all messed up and he had a few scratches across his face. One scratched up hand had been outstretched and tapping on the glass, his expression listless as if he didn’t really see Dib.

Brow lowering with concern, Dib put the bat down and slid open the window. Placing his hands on the sil as if to say do not enter, Dib leaned out for a closer look.

“Zim what happened? You look like shit,” he asked, his voice low so as not to wake the neighbors. Crazy science experiments may be the norm in this household, but even this would have been hard to explain. Not that Dib wanted to. Zim was his alien to expose to the world, no one else's. Besides, Gaz would exact revenge if they woke her up and Dib wasn’t exactly eager to incur such wrath this early.

Zim blinked slowly. He lifted his finger, opened his mouth, then sighed and let his hand fall. 

“My house. It won’t let me in. Can I stay here for a bit?” Dib’s mouth literally fell open. Then he started to chuckle. And tired as he was, it fell into straight open laughter. To the point that he was holding his stomach.

“Your house won’t let you in? Why? Doesn’t it recognize you?” he asked between guffaws. 

This seemed to pull the irken from his stupor. His eyes sharpened and he sneered at the human. Pointing sharply at him, he spat,

“Stupid Dib. Of course it recognized me. How could it mistake the mighty Zim for anyone else!?!!”

“Well then why not?” Dib asked again, putting his hands on his hips. He still had laughter in his voice, but he tried to keep it down.

Zim’s eyes shifted a bit, unable to meet his gaze in discomfort. This made Dib even more interested. What could have possibly made the irken soldier uncomfortable? When he realized Dib wasn’t going to budge, Zim made a frustrated growl. 

“I don’t have time for the games Dib worm. I’m coming in.”

Suddenly, the lower two pak legs hooked onto the window sill. Dib instinctively jumped back as the irken clumsily climbed into the room. His leg touched the frame and he yelped in pain, stumbling in a panicked mess of limbs into Dib. They crashed to the floor with a combined groan.

He had half a mind to grab his bat and hit the irken invader, but Dib knew it would do little good at this point. The pak outclassed a bat every time.

Once inside, the pak had dropped the holographic disguise, revealing Zim in all his green glory. He still looked pretty beat up, but now up close it made more sense. His hair had looked messed up, because his antennae were bent. One of his eyes had completely swollen shut. He smelled uncharacteristically like he'd been rolling around in the yard. And it was then Dib noticed the way one of Zim’s feet dangled, sort of at an off angle from the other. Dib made one of those sharp intake of breaths through his teeth. 

Zim looked vacantly at Dib, their faces way too close for the humans comfort. Dib actually gulped, unsure what he was going to do. Then the Irken blinked back into focus and pulled away. He then carried himself zia the pack legs over to Dib's bed, where they gently deposited him amidst the nest of blankets Dib had recently vacated. The human thought he imagined the smirk on the Irken’s face, or rather went along with the illusion his visitor was trying to portray. He didn’t know what was going on, but Zim was certainly acting weird. Weirder than normal.

“I have questions,” Dib said quietly. Zim grumbled and rolled his eye.

“Of course you do. Whenever do you not? You’re the nosiest human I’ve ever met,” he replied sarcastically. Dib made an offended sound, but found he couldn't really argue. Most of their interactions consisted of him trying to get information out of the alien. Hell, on multiple occasions he’d broken into his house with the express purpose of getting information from him. 

If circumstances were different he'd have come off as downright creepy and he knew it. His only validation was that Zim was alien and he needed to gather whatever evidence he could. Though over the years it became less about stopping his many schemes for world domination and more about his undying curiosity about the Irken himself. Though he’d never let Zim know this of course.

Dib followed, at a distance after he closed the window. Clearly, Zim was in a bad way. He hadn’t seen him quite like this before. He seemed, almost disoriented. Whatever happened, it must have been rough.

“Did, someone do this to you?” Dib ventured after a moment, motioning to the injuries. Zim grunted noncommittally before rubbing his face. The pack legs retracted into themselves. Once gone, the pak spots let off a pulsing glow like a charging dock. In the dim light, Zim almost could be mistaken for a normal human teen. Small and weak. Almost. Dib wasn’t fooled though as he sat at the foot of the bed and waited.

“No, I did this to me,” Zim replied in a huff as if Dib had just asked. Dib jumped at the sudden answer, lost in his own thoughts for the past few minutes. They looked at each other in confusion.

“You wanna run that by me again?” Dib said, amusement in his voice again. Zim made an irritated face, but then he was used to this. Dib often made him repeat himself, to the point that he suspected he was doing it for his own amusement rather than a lack of understanding.

“I said I did this. I got drunk. So the house wouldn’t let me in. I activated the defense protocols trying to force my way in and this happened as a result. The house has very good counter invasion protocols,” Zim explained in rapid succession. Dib’s eyes widened the more he spoke. Then he had to swallow another laugh, though a smile was clear on his face.

“Okay. So I guess I have a couple follow up questions," Dib said, scooting a little closer.

"No. Enough with your incessant noise. It burns my ears," Zim snaps as he grabs one of the bent antennae and straightens it with a sharp crack. He makes a clear sound of pain through gritted teeth. Dib makes a cringing face in response. 

“You don’t have ears,” Dib counters readily despite himself. Crack, as the other antennae was straightened and Dib looked more concerned. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Shut up. You know nothing of Irken Biology. This is no more painful than when you snap your knuckles, which you do all the time,” Zim argues in that haughty tone he takes, but it lacked the heat of confidence he normally had. Dib honed in on it immediately, because he was so used to listening to Zim’s many rants about how superior the Irken Empire was in every way. How their species was so advanced and their culture so perfect and their bodies powerful. But Zim didn’t go into it like he normally did. In fact, he was studiously, quiet. A red flag in Dib’s book.

“So what about that then,” Dib asks, pointing to the offset leg. Zim groans at the site of it. 

“That will heal in time with help from the pak. But what do you care of it Dib-stink? Just leave me alone already,” Zim replied, waving off the leg in vague irritation. 

“It looks kind of broken. Shouldn’t you set it?” Dib asked reasonably as he leaned in for a closer look. Zim shrank away from Dib’s interest, but his injury prevented him from moving far.

“You just want to cause Zim pain. I’ve seen the things that lived in your huge head Dib. I remember. Dark things,” Zim says, his voice dropping low and dramatic. Dib chuckled at the memory, so long ago now that the dreams no longer gripped him in terror as they once had. 

“Not intentionally. But if that heals like that then you’ll walk all funny. Then you’ll have to break it and set it straight again anyways,” Dib replied steadily, his hand poised above Zim’s leg where the bend was most pronounced. 

Zim made a face, then abruptly shrieked and slapped Dib’s hand away.

“Hey, what the hell Zim?” Dib said in surprise, pulling his hand back.

“I said no! My body does not work like yours Stupid! It will be perfect in time. It does not need any of your help!” Then he grabbed the covers and pulled them over himself. The only thing that stuck out were the ends of his antennae.

Dib sat there, dumbstruck. 

Gently, he crawled up the side of the bed to lay beside the lump of blankets, propping his head with one arm. Keeping a respectable distance between them, he waited a few moments. When Zim didn’t respond to his nearness, he reached out. Carefully, Dib brushed a fingertip along the end of one antennae.

“Hey. That’s not very fair you know. Seeing as you came here and all,” he said softly. The feathery appendage shuddered but didn’t retreat under his touch so he continued to stroke it gently. 

“I get it, something happened that you don’t want to talk about. That’s fine. It’s your business. But you came here. So that means, you wanted something, right?” he ventured, his voice going softer as if he was scared to say more. Speaking honestly had always been hard for them. 

When he got no response, Dib sighed and pulled his hand back. After a little while his eyes drifted shut and he fell into a light slumber, snoring softly.

It was around then that the blankets shifted and the Irken turned over to close the distance between them. He rested his head on Dib’s chest, letting the knot in his throat ease so that he could breathe more easily. It had taken all his resolve not to make a sound in the blankets while Dib spoke. He wanted to. Even as his eye was healing, he wanted to use it to cry, but his training prevented it. Now was not the time. 

The pain he’d received from the house had been unexpected, but mild. Duly earned for his foolish behavior. Behavior he blamed as reaction to terrible news. News that he did not as yet want to process, or voice. Even thinking it made him grab Dib’s shirt and press his face into his chest more. He wanted to scream. The only reason he didn’t was because Dib reached out in his sleep and pulled him into a hug. 

Being suddenly surrounded by warmth pushed back the tide of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. Zim let out a sigh and let his grip relax. 

No he couldn’t tell Dib why he got drunk that night. Not yet at least.   
But this, maybe this would be enough to make up for that.


End file.
